‘Heretical’ cosmologist does away with the big bang

By Zeeya Merali

Calabi-Yau space

(Image: Andrew J. Hanson, University of Indiana)

“I am a heretic,” Cristiano Germani announced to an audience of cosmologists last month. Few would disagree, as he is proposing a radical alternative to standard cosmology&colon; a universe with no big bang creation moment, and no rapid inflation. Rather than a big bang, he suggests a slingshot.

In the early 1980s, Alan Guth at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed that our universe underwent inflation – a period of rapid expansion in the first 10-34 seconds after the big bang. Germani, a cosmologist at the International …

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